go to the scaffold rejoicing; but the thoughts—O God, strengthen and support me!” cried the unhappy man, hiding his face in his hands.
“Fear not for me, Edward. I feel here,” said Ellen, laying her hand on her heart, “a conviction that we shall soon meet again. I will urge you no more love. But the boy—the boy—Oh, Edward! what will become of that dear boy when we are both gone?”
“Please God to spare my life, he’ll never want a father,” said old Adams, as the tears found a devious passage down the furrows of his weather-beaten face.
“What will become of him?” cried Peters with energy. “Why, he shall retrieve his father’s faults—wash out the stain in his father’s character. He shall prove as liege a subject as I have been a rebellious one. He shall as faithfully serve his country as I have shamefully deserted it. He shall be as honest as I have been false; and oh, may he be as prosperous as I have been unfortunate—as happy as I have been miserable. Come hither, boy. By the fond hopes I entertain of pardon and peace above—by the Almighty, in whose presence I must shortly tremble, I here devote thee to thy country—serve her bravely and faithfully. Tell me, Willy, do you understand me, and will you promise me this?”
The boy laid his head upon his father’s shoulder, and answered in a low tone—“I will;” and then, after a short pause, added, “but what are they going to do with you, father?”
“I am going to die for my country’s good, my child. If God wills it, may you do the same, but in a more honourable manner.”
The boy seemed lost in thought, and, after a short time, quitted his father’s side, and sat down on the deck by his mother, without speaking.
Adams rose, and taking him up, said, “Mayhap you have that to talk of which wants no listeners. I will take Willy with me, and give him a little air before I put him in his hammock. It’s but a close hole, this. Good night to you both, though I’m afeard that’s but a wish.”
But a wish indeed!—and it was the last that was ever to close upon the unhappy Peters. The next morning was appointed for his execution. There are scenes of such consummate misery, that they cannot be portrayed without harrowing up the feelings of the reader—and of these the climax may be found in a fond wife, lying at the feet of her husband during the last twelve hours of his mortal career. We must draw the curtain.
And now, reader, the title of this work, which may have puzzled you, will be explained: for, intelligible as it may be to our profession, it may be a mystery to those who are not in his Majesty’s service. The broad-headed arrow was a mark assumed at the time of the Edwards (when it was considered the most powerful weapon of attack), as distinguishing the property of the King; and this mark has been continued down to the present day. Every article supplied to his Majesty’s service from the arsenals and dockyards is thickly studded with this mark; and to be found in possession of any property so marked is a capital offence, as it designates that property to be the King’s own.
When Adams left the condemned cell with Willy, he thought upon what had passed, and as Peters had devoted the boy to his King and country, he felt an irresistible desire to mark him. The practice of tatooing is very common in the navy; and you will see a sailor’s arm covered with emblems from the shoulder to the wrist; his own initials, that of his sweetheart, the crucifix, Neptune, and mermaids being huddled together, as if mythology and Scripture were one and the same thing. Adams was not long in deciding, and telling our little hero that his father wished it—he easily persuaded him to undergo the pain of the operation, which was performed on the forecastle, by pricking the shape of the figure required with the points of needles, and rubbing the bleeding parts with wet gunpowder and ink. By these simple means the form of a broad-headed arrow, or the King’s mark, was, in the course of an hour, indelibly engraved upon the left shoulder of little Willy, who was then consigned to his hammock.
Chapter Four.
The strife was o’er, the vanquish’d had their doom;
The mutineers were crush’d, dispersed, or ta’en,
Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain.
Byron.
The day broke serenely but brightly, and poured in a stream of light through the iron grating of the cell where Peters and his wife lay clasped in each other’s arms, not asleep, but torpid, and worn out with extreme suffering. Peters was the first to break the silence, and gently moved Ellen, as he called her by her name. She had not for some time lifted up her head, which was buried in his bosom; and she was not aware that the darkness had been dispelled. She raised her head at his summons, and as the dazzling light burst upon her sunken eyes, so did the recollection that this was the fatal morning flash upon her memory.
With a shriek, she again buried her face in the bosom of her husband. “Ellen, as you love me,” said Peters, “do not distress me in my last hour. I have yet much to do before I die, and require your assistance and support. Rise, my love, and let me write to my father; I must not neglect the interest of our child.”
She rose tremblingly, and, turning back from her face her beautiful hair, which had been for so many days neglected, and was now moistened with her tears, reached the materials required by her husband, who, drawing towards him the wooden form to serve him as a table, wrote the following letter, while his wife sat by him with a countenance of idiotic apathy and despair:—
“Dear Father—Yes, still dear father—Before you cast your eyes upon these characters, you will be childless. Your eldest boy perished nobly in the field of honour: your youngest and last will this morning meet an ignominious, but deserved death on the scaffold. Thus will you be childless; but if your son does meet the fate of a traitor, still the secret is confined to you alone, and none will imagine that the unhappy Peters, ringleader of a mutinous ship, was the scion of a race who have so long preserved an unblemished name. Fain would I have spared you this shock to your feelings, and have allowed you to remain in ignorance of my disgrace; but I have an act of duty to perform to you and to my child—towards you, that your estates may not be claimed, and pass away to distant and collateral branches;—towards my child, that he may eventually reclaim his rights. Father, I forgive you, I might say—but no—let all now be buried in oblivion; and as you peruse these lines, and think on my unhappy fate, shed a tear in memory of the once happy child you fondled on your knee, and say to your heart, ‘I forgive him.’
“I have dedicated my boy to his king and country. If you forgive me, and mean to protect your grandchild, do not change the career in life marked out for him:—it is a solemn compact between my God and me; and you must fulfil this last earnest request of a dying man, as you hope for future pardon and bliss.
“His distracted mother sits by me; I would entreat you to extend your kindness towards her, but I fear she will soon require no earthly aid. Still, soothe her last moments with a promise to protect the orphan, and may God bless you for your kindness.
“Your affectionate son, Edward.”
Peters had scarcely finished this letter when Adams, with the boy in his arms, was admitted. “I come for final orders, Peters, and to tell you what I did last night to this boy. He is real stuff—never winced. You said he was to be the King’s, and I thought you would like that he should be marked as such. There is no mistaking this mark, Peters,” continued Adams, baring the boy’s shoulder, and showing the impression of the broad-headed arrow, which now appeared angry and inflamed, as it always is for some
